The Naked Soul of Sweet Jones

The late UGK rapper, one of the foundations of Southern rap, has another record posthumously released.

"Talkin' bout my first solo album, bitch," says Pimp C at the outset of The Naked Soul of Sweet Jones. "I ain't never had one before." He's sort of right. Sweet James Jones Stories, his official debut, was a cobbled-together collection released while Pimp served out a prison sentence. Pimpalation, the follow-up, actually came out while Pimp was alive and free, but, obviously enough, the man conceived it as a compilation-- a way for Pimp to showcase himself among all the artists and producers in his expanded circle, rather than a stand-alone statement. And sadly enough, it's impossible to tell how much of The Naked Soul is the real solo debut that Pimp wanted to release.

Pimp's been dead for nearly three years, a casualty of some combination of unprescribed prescription cough syrup and sleep apnea. Plenty of the material on the album sounds like it dates back to the era just before Pimp died, as his duo UGK roared back to life with the triumphant double album Underground Kingz. Other tracks could've been finished only later-- after Pimp's death. One of the album's guests, the onetime Pimp protégé Lil Boosie, has been in prison, facing murder charges, for about a year now. Another, Drake, has really had a career only in the years following Pimp's death; even though Drake calls himself "an honorary resident of UGK-town," I'm not even sure the two ever met. (And given Pimp's outspoken views on sensitive R&B types like Ne-Yo, it's easy to imagine Pimp mercilessly mocking Drake in public if their careers had had a chance to overlap.) Parts of the record, like the regrettable Jazze Pha collab "Fly Lady", feel like chintzy time-capsule artifacts from a forgotten 2007. Others have the sad air of a posthumous Tupac album-- left-behind sketches of freestyle verses, given new music and preserved only because the man isn't still around to improve on them. Like every other Pimp C solo album, this isn't really an album; it's just a bunch of tracks thrown together.

That's a lost opportunity because Pimp C knew how to put albums together. As half of UGK, he produced some truly dazzling Southern rap full-lengths-- giving plenty of room to his blues and soul and swamp-funk influences without ever letting them overwhelm his thunderous low-end thump, helping to establish the blueprint for 90s Southern rap in the process. As a vocalist, he was also the duo's emotional core, singing choruses in a strutting, pinched falsetto and sneering his verses in a thick, arrogant twang while partner Bun B played the wise and precise elder to his unreformed knucklehead character. Pimp himself didn't produce a single track on The Naked Soul, so we only get to hear a part of what made him great. But that overwhelming swagger remains very much on display here.

Pimp's rapping here covers a pretty narrow spectrum; he spends most of his time talking about either sex or jewelry. And if you're not into the idea of a song in which Pimp and Too $hort explain to you, at some length, why you have a vagina, you should probably stay away. But Pimp played up his player archetype perfectly, and it's still fun to hear him lay out juicy, borderline-disgusting come-ons in that elongated leer of his. More than any rapper this side of Ol' Dirty Bastard, Pimp took absurd delight in the squelchy, squeaky details of sex, and he was absolutely unafraid to sound gross. So: "We got to the beach, the ground was so sandy/ Bitches on my dick like ants on candy." Or: "Suck ya toes, I'm gonna shrimp tonight/ My dick make you weak like kryptonite." Objectionable as it may be, this stuff is always fun to hear.

But fun or no, the album mostly just makes me sad. There can be only so many unreleased Pimp tracks, so many chances to hear that voice on a new song. And only a few tracks here belong anywhere near Pimp's pantheon. "Since the 90s" features cheap, twinkling horror-movie keyboards; Pimp didn't rap on tracks like that too often, but he always sounded great on them, and an on-fire E-40 guest verse only seals the deal. "Hit the Parking Lot" is a rumbling slick-talk session with little buddies Webbie and Lil Boosie both operating at peak capacity and Pimp schooling them both. And "Massacre" is just a dinky instrumental, no chorus, Pimp issuing guttural threats for five minutes. Really, that was all he ever needed to do. An hour of that would work a lot better than the patched-together succession of guest-verses and lost verses we get here.